English

Noun

paleonymy ‎(countable and uncountable, plural paleonymies)

1. The use of a preexisting word in a new context.
   • 2005, Yoshimi Takeuchi & ‎Richard Calichman, What is Modernity?: Writings of Takeuchi Yoshimi, ISBN 0231133278, page 8:

     Paleonymy stands in Takeuchi's text as a device to think such older words or concepts anew, therebv allowing them to effectively intervene in critical discourse.

   • 2012, Ed Pluth, Signifiers and Acts: Freedom in Lacan's Theory of the Subject, ISBN 0791479374, page 19:

     A paleonymy proceeds by continuing to use an old, traditional name while making the name different from what it always was, because one or more of the predicates associated with that name is being rethought and reworked.

   • 2016, Christy Wampole, Rootedness: The Ramifications of a Metaphor, ISBN 022631779X, page 208:

     In his introduction, he begins with the problem of paleonymy, the summoning up of old names in new circumstances, writing self-consciously about the form in which his text will present itself.

2. The connotations that a word carries due to its historical meaning or meanings.
   • 1992, James A. Berlin & ‎Michael Vivion, Cultural Studies in the English Classroom, page 43:

     I use the word "humanities," as the expression "English department," with a keen sense of the value of paleonymy.

   • 2005, Sandra Bermann & ‎Michael Wood, Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation, ISBN 1400826683, page 100:

     It is my belief that unless the paleonymy of the language is felt in some rough historical or etymological way, the translator is unequal to her task.

   • 2007, Nermeen Shaikh, The present as history:

     I should not have used this phrase because the word "violence" has a kind of paleonymy that suggests bad stuff.